6 ms·

With relatively cheap transport to Mars (due to reusable launch), I don't see why building rockets there would make more sense than bringing them from Earth, i.

by gnode 9y ago

With relatively cheap transport to Mars (due to reusable launch), I don't see why building rockets there would make more sense than bringing them from Earth, i.e. returning them to Earth. Furthermore, to develop rockets on Mars you'd also need a substantial supporting industry (metallurgy, testing, etc.).

njarboe 9y ago
I would guess the goal is a self-sustaining civilization on Mars, a la Musk. People there will want to build as many things locally as they can. Ground transportation, energy sources, habitats, rockets, etc. Most of the parameters of Mars can be simulated on Earth but there is a big one that can't be simulated: 1/3 gravity. Iterating development on Mars for Mars will have large advantages over building things on Earth for Mars, long shipment to Mars, testing on Mars, build next version on Earth, ship to Mars, etc. Plus simulated Mars environments will not be perfect. With this tech they are hoping to drop the need for supporting industry for making stuff substantially.
- Retric 9y ago
  With current tech we might get a self sustaining Mars population at ~100 million people. But, at that point you don't need rockets so it's not solving any real issues. It's getting to that 100 million population with supporting infrastructure to build things like CPU's that's the problem. Not simply building rocket engines which would be relatively easy and relatively cheap to ship.
  - Ancalagon 9y ago
    Where the heck did you get 100 million? By all accounts I've seen it should be far less than that.
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      We don't know the real number. Might be 100,000, might be 100 million. Honestly, both estimates are valid, IMO. I think 1 million could be doable, especially with some technology development. A country like the US is not even self-sufficient, although we could be. The consequence would be a reduction in productivity and quality of life. Now, Mars also has much higher living costs, although the costs are definitely prone to economies of scale. So a smaller population would have to work more and have a lower quality of life to allow life on Mars. At some point, you just can't keep up with the life support and maintenance required to live on Mars, so the population below some point cannot be self-sustaining (even if you have all the tools). You want as many people as possible to allow economies of scale and productivity improvements from specialization to take hold.
      - gnode 9y ago
        > A country like the US is not even self-sufficient, although we could be. The consequence would be a reduction in productivity and quality of life. For this reason, I think Mars isn't going to prioritise self-dependence. A civilisation which could thrive if the Earth stopped existing is a romantic ideal, but like most places, the people will prioritise their prosperity. Producing CPUs on Mars will likely be very low down the list; they're light enough to cheaply bring from Earth, and have a huge supply chain. Elon Musk likes to joke about pizzerias on Mars, but I think they'd be much higher up the list, if people want to eat anything other than canned food.
        Robotbeat 9y ago
        CPUs certainly will be produced on Earth for a while due to the very low mass (which makes transport costs negligible even over interplanetary distances). But Mars certainly will want to produce the vast majority of their own stuff due to very high transport costs. And as far as Mars being cut off, certainly Mars will want to trade with Earth for as long as possible. Self-sustaining will hopefully remain theoretical. That doesn't mean they won't have the capability to do so if necessary.
    - Retric 9y ago
      I saw it based on back of an envelope calculation. The problem is for every worker in a modern society you need X people to support them. Directly as in children to replace them, old people that used to be them, fractions of people to educate their replacement, doctors to keep everyone healthy etc. Add to that police, a justice system, politicians and lawyers. Not just miners, farmers, plumbers, researchers, and architects. Basically, everyone needed to make every individual component physical and social of society, plus all the people to support them and support the people that support them. And beyond that people to support children born with physical and mental handicaps. PS: In the very short term you can get away with an unbalanced population and hyper educated generalists, but that means an inherent dependency on Earth. AKA you need to build a society supportable by average people not just select highly educated, healthy, high IQ, elite. Further, this also removes things like entertainers. PPS: Now if you want some form of Science fiction dystopia where less productive people are pushed out of an airlock then the numbers do shrink somewhat. But, that's going to make recruitment a lot harder.
      - nostrademons 9y ago
        Something I've often wondered: could you recreate a civilization that vaguely approximates modern society "from scratch" with dramatically fewer people by focusing only on those technologies & institutions that are most important? In other words, if society had a nuclear holocaust next year but several highly-educated people survived and they managed to keep a complete readable copy of society's collected knowledge, could they build an advanced technological society with < 1M people? I'm reminded of software rewrite efforts. Big software projects never get designed from scratch and implemented, they evolve by accretion. Somebody builds something halfway useful, they get capital (or volunteers) to help improve it, and eventually you've organized the planet's information and made it universally accessible and useful. In the process you acquire a shitload of technical debt so that it becomes very difficult to understand or change the lowest levels of the system. Trying to rewrite large software projects with bug-for-bug compatibility and feature completeness always fails. You run into the same issues as trying to build a complex system from scratch. But trying to rewrite a large software system where you're allowed to move the goalposts and sacrifice feature completeness often results in a system with an order of magnitude less code that's simpler for the majority of users as well. You get to prune out all the features you thought would be useful but turn out to be more trouble than they're worth, and you can often take simpler paths once you know where you're going. Are there similar shortcuts available for human society? For example, could you race from farming villages to electricity by building wooden windwills that turn dynamos of simple copper wire loops? What would that change in how we approach industrialization, if you could start building machines without needing the labor of thousands of people and their supporting society? Are there similar shortcuts for semiconductors & integrated circuits, or do you really need the full might of a modern industrial society before you even have the raw materials?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  > People there will want to build as many things locally as they can. I can just see the “Mars First” and “Buy Martian” slogans now.

by gnode 9y ago

njarboe 9y ago

I would guess the goal is a self-sustaining civilization on Mars, a la Musk. People there will want to build as many things locally as they can. Ground transportation, energy sources, habitats, rockets, etc. Most of the parameters of Mars can be simulated on Earth but there is a big one that can't be simulated: 1/3 gravity. Iterating development on Mars for Mars will have large advantages over building things on Earth for Mars, long shipment to Mars, testing on Mars, build next version on Earth, ship to Mars, etc. Plus simulated Mars environments will not be perfect. With this tech they are hoping to drop the need for supporting industry for making stuff substantially.

Retric 9y ago
With current tech we might get a self sustaining Mars population at ~100 million people. But, at that point you don't need rockets so it's not solving any real issues. It's getting to that 100 million population with supporting infrastructure to build things like CPU's that's the problem. Not simply building rocket engines which would be relatively easy and relatively cheap to ship.
- Ancalagon 9y ago
  Where the heck did you get 100 million? By all accounts I've seen it should be far less than that.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    We don't know the real number. Might be 100,000, might be 100 million. Honestly, both estimates are valid, IMO. I think 1 million could be doable, especially with some technology development. A country like the US is not even self-sufficient, although we could be. The consequence would be a reduction in productivity and quality of life. Now, Mars also has much higher living costs, although the costs are definitely prone to economies of scale. So a smaller population would have to work more and have a lower quality of life to allow life on Mars. At some point, you just can't keep up with the life support and maintenance required to live on Mars, so the population below some point cannot be self-sustaining (even if you have all the tools). You want as many people as possible to allow economies of scale and productivity improvements from specialization to take hold.
    - gnode 9y ago
      > A country like the US is not even self-sufficient, although we could be. The consequence would be a reduction in productivity and quality of life. For this reason, I think Mars isn't going to prioritise self-dependence. A civilisation which could thrive if the Earth stopped existing is a romantic ideal, but like most places, the people will prioritise their prosperity. Producing CPUs on Mars will likely be very low down the list; they're light enough to cheaply bring from Earth, and have a huge supply chain. Elon Musk likes to joke about pizzerias on Mars, but I think they'd be much higher up the list, if people want to eat anything other than canned food.
      - Robotbeat 9y ago
        CPUs certainly will be produced on Earth for a while due to the very low mass (which makes transport costs negligible even over interplanetary distances). But Mars certainly will want to produce the vast majority of their own stuff due to very high transport costs. And as far as Mars being cut off, certainly Mars will want to trade with Earth for as long as possible. Self-sustaining will hopefully remain theoretical. That doesn't mean they won't have the capability to do so if necessary.
  - Retric 9y ago
    I saw it based on back of an envelope calculation. The problem is for every worker in a modern society you need X people to support them. Directly as in children to replace them, old people that used to be them, fractions of people to educate their replacement, doctors to keep everyone healthy etc. Add to that police, a justice system, politicians and lawyers. Not just miners, farmers, plumbers, researchers, and architects. Basically, everyone needed to make every individual component physical and social of society, plus all the people to support them and support the people that support them. And beyond that people to support children born with physical and mental handicaps. PS: In the very short term you can get away with an unbalanced population and hyper educated generalists, but that means an inherent dependency on Earth. AKA you need to build a society supportable by average people not just select highly educated, healthy, high IQ, elite. Further, this also removes things like entertainers. PPS: Now if you want some form of Science fiction dystopia where less productive people are pushed out of an airlock then the numbers do shrink somewhat. But, that's going to make recruitment a lot harder.
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      Something I've often wondered: could you recreate a civilization that vaguely approximates modern society "from scratch" with dramatically fewer people by focusing only on those technologies & institutions that are most important? In other words, if society had a nuclear holocaust next year but several highly-educated people survived and they managed to keep a complete readable copy of society's collected knowledge, could they build an advanced technological society with < 1M people? I'm reminded of software rewrite efforts. Big software projects never get designed from scratch and implemented, they evolve by accretion. Somebody builds something halfway useful, they get capital (or volunteers) to help improve it, and eventually you've organized the planet's information and made it universally accessible and useful. In the process you acquire a shitload of technical debt so that it becomes very difficult to understand or change the lowest levels of the system. Trying to rewrite large software projects with bug-for-bug compatibility and feature completeness always fails. You run into the same issues as trying to build a complex system from scratch. But trying to rewrite a large software system where you're allowed to move the goalposts and sacrifice feature completeness often results in a system with an order of magnitude less code that's simpler for the majority of users as well. You get to prune out all the features you thought would be useful but turn out to be more trouble than they're worth, and you can often take simpler paths once you know where you're going. Are there similar shortcuts available for human society? For example, could you race from farming villages to electricity by building wooden windwills that turn dynamos of simple copper wire loops? What would that change in how we approach industrialization, if you could start building machines without needing the labor of thousands of people and their supporting society? Are there similar shortcuts for semiconductors & integrated circuits, or do you really need the full might of a modern industrial society before you even have the raw materials?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bobwaycott 9y ago
> People there will want to build as many things locally as they can. I can just see the “Mars First” and “Buy Martian” slogans now.